Ilya Shapiro

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Before joining Cato, he was a special assistant/advisor to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule of law issues and practiced international, political, commercial, and antitrust litigation at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Shapiro has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, L.A. Times, USA Today, National Law Journal, Weekly Standard, New York Times Online, and National Review Online.

Libertarians are by definition individualistic, and so the sorts of debates you often hear at their gatherings often revolve around questioning someones ideological bona fides or debating how much libertarians should get involved in the messy, compromise-filled world of politics.

This debate is so banal. Progressives shout discrimination, conservatives cry liberty, and it really all boils down to the difference between government and private action, which both sides misunderstand.

The Supreme Court heard arguments on Wednesday in Michigan v. EPA, asking whether it was unreasonable for the Environmental Protection Agency to ignore costs in determining the appropriateness of regulating mercury emissions from power plants.

Medicaid, the entitlement program for low-income Americans jointly funded by the state and federal government, represents about 25 percent of state budgets. Federal funding represents more than half (57 percent) of that amount, and that funding is now being threatened by Obamacare.

This spring, the Affordable Care Act will make its third trip to the Supreme Court. But King v. Burwell is different from its predecessors. Instead of challenging Obamacares constitutionality, or the way certain regulations burden particular types of plaintiffs, this lawsuit questions how the executive branch has enforced the law generally.

Under the Bush administration, the Labor Department interpreted a piece of the Fair Labor Standards Act as exempting mortgage-loan officers from eligibility for overtime pay. The Obama Labor Department didnt see the law the same way, however, and issued a re-interpretation.

After engaging in a racially motivated street fight with a black man, Charles Cannon found himself facingas expectedassault charges and a sentencing enhancement to penalize him further under Texass hate crime law. You see, they had to make a federal case out of a fistfight to stop the return of slavery.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Tuesday morning in Halbig v. Burwell that the government isn’t Humpty Dumpty and so statutory text doesn’t mean whatever the government says it means.